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A career in JavaScript is the pursuit of a professional path focused on developing, designing, and maintaining websites, applications, and programs using the JavaScript programming language. It involves writing code that is optimized for web browsers and other platforms, understanding client requirements, and creating user-friendly designs. In addition to coding, a career in JavaScript may also involve troubleshooting existing code, testing, debugging, and deploying software solutions. The skillset required for this type of career includes knowledge of HTML, CSS, and other scripting languages, as well as problem-solving and analytical thinking.
How to Turn Engineering Work into a Promotion
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
29 min
How to Turn Engineering Work into a Promotion
This Talk discusses the process of building a toolkit and applying neurolinguistic programming techniques to succeed in software development. It emphasizes the importance of self-promotion and setting effective goals for career advancement. The concept of a brag bank is introduced as a tool to collect and remember achievements. The NNQ method is presented as a way to build a compelling case for promotion using names, numbers, and quotes. It also explores the idea of having a backup plan and considering alternative options when promotion is not feasible. Finally, the Talk touches on the importance of positive thinking, knowing when to move on, and avoiding excessive specialization.
On Becoming a Tech Lead
TechLead Conference 2023TechLead Conference 2023
25 min
On Becoming a Tech Lead
Top Content
The role of a Tech Lead involves shaping the roadmap, helping the team be more effective, and working on important projects. Lessons learned include encouraging idea sharing, avoiding taking on all the work, and focusing on delegation. Tech Leads focus on the outcome, involve the team in decision-making, and make plans based on how different pieces will interact. The role of a Tech Lead is to focus on engineering and guide the team in figuring out how the whole system should fit together. Architecting can become problematic when it loses touch with the coding part, resulting in implementation issues.
Effective Communication for Engineers
TechLead Conference 2023TechLead Conference 2023
36 min
Effective Communication for Engineers
Top Content
Today's Talk covers the four building blocks of communication: people, message, context, and effective listening. It emphasizes the importance of considering the perspective of others and tailoring messages to the recipient. The Talk discusses different types and channels of communication, and the need to align them with the intended message. It also highlights the significance of soft skills in communication and provides techniques for effective communication and assessing soft skills in tech interviews. Cross-cultural communication and the impact of bluntness are explored as well.
A Career As Software Engineer
React Advanced Conference 2022React Advanced Conference 2022
24 min
A Career As Software Engineer
Code will be imperfect and perishable, so testing and debugging are crucial. Building relationships and being generous with code reviews are important for teams. Code ownership should belong to the team, not individuals. Prioritizing functionality over consistency can lead to more efficient development. Growing into a tech lead role requires building relationships and coaching skills.
Impact: Growing as an Engineer
React Summit 2022React Summit 2022
27 min
Impact: Growing as an Engineer
Top Content
This Talk explores the concepts of impact and growth in software engineering. It emphasizes the importance of finding ways to make the impossible possible and the role of mastery in expanding one's sphere of impact. The Talk also highlights the significance of understanding business problems and fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Effective communication, accountability, and decision-making are essential skills for engineers, and setting goals and finding sponsors can help drive career growth. Feedback, goal setting, and stepping outside of comfort zones are crucial for personal development and growth. Taking responsibility for one's own growth and finding opportunities for impact are key themes discussed in the Talk.
Emma Bostian: I landed my dream job by sharing my blogs on Twitter
Emma Bostian: I landed my dream job by sharing my blogs on Twitter
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Emma Bostian
Emma Bostian
Software engineer, lecturer, podcast host, author — is there something Emma Bostian hasn't done? She moved from America to Sweden, started working at Spotify, and took up a few challenges along the way. And now she has some career tips to share.
What led you to software engineering? I was raised in the ecosphere of tech because my dad is a software engineer at IBM, and my mom was a designer there, too. My dad always encouraged me to join STEM and take a look at computer science — however, I was convinced I wanted to be a medical doctor. In my first year of college, I declared a biology major and quickly realized I was not too fond of it. In my second semester, I switched to an actuarial science major where I took Introduction to Computer Science, and the rest is history. In my second year of college, I declared a computer science major and began my journey from there.
What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career?Writing blog posts and documenting my learning journey on Twitter has far been the best career boost. I wrote purely for myself to reference the things I learned over time, and I even utilized my design skills in Figma to create custom graphics depicting difficult concepts like CSS specificity. By sharing my blogs on Twitter and engaging with the people reading them, I was able to grow an audience extremely quickly. I began receiving conference speaking opportunities, podcast requests, and course invitations to teach with LinkedIn Learning and Frontend Masters.
Ultimately, I landed my job at Spotify through Twitter, too, when a friend and follower of mine asked if I would be interested in interviewing. Now I live in Stockholm working my dream job. It still blows my mind how tweeting about my blog led me to some of the most amazing career opportunities.
What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? First, be patient. I often see posts on Twitter or LinkedIn about developers who were promoted to a senior position after a year. And while this is wonderful, I think we forget that each company has a different standard for what constitutes a senior developer, and everyone's journey will be different.
Second, don't be afraid to ask questions. If you try your best to solve a problem or answer a question you have, but you can't figure it out after a reasonable amount of time, ask a team member or mentor for help.
And lastly, invest in the right resources for learning. When I started my journey, I didn't know which platforms worked for me to learn. Now, I have a few trusted platforms such as Frontend Masters, Free Code Camp, or Level Up Tutorials that I go to when I need to learn a new skill.
You're currently working as a software engineer at Spotify. What does a typical day of yours look like there?I begin my day answering emails. Then we have a team breakfast and a standup remotely as we're all still remote at Spotify. After that, we might have a web tech sync with the other squads in our business unit. The day usually includes some form of pair or mob programming, depending on the work stream. 
My team always has Fika, a traditional Swedish coffee break, scheduled every afternoon. Every couple of Fridays, we have team games planned to release some stress. 
Also, I tend to have a lot of free time to focus, which is nice but makes for a boring answer to this question!
Do you have some rituals or tools that keep you focused and goal-oriented?I'll admit that I've been struggling with staying motivated in the time of remote work. I've been remote with Spotify since onboarding a year ago, but my team is wonderful, and they help me when I'm down.
Apart from that, I use Todoist to keep track of my tasks, and, naturally, I listen to Spotify while working. But other than that, not really. Maybe I should adopt some new tools to keep me on track!
My current favorite Spotify playlist is Brand New Chill: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX6uQnoHESB3u?si=380263b3c853442e
I also love Chillout Daily: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7ozIozDp260fjNOZy1yzRG?si=66d6c839ec9b458a
You wrote a book called De-coding the Technical Interview. What was the impulse to do it?I wanted to give the community a manual of the essentials of computer science knowledge to ace the technical interviews. The book covers data structures like stacks, queues, or linked lists, tackles algorithms, and deals with systems design. You'll also learn about the interview process from start to finish, get tips on how to submit an amazing take-home project, or understand how to problem solve. You'll also gain knowledge on the frontend coding skills needed to excel at a frontend interview.
If you could stress one piece of advice on surviving a technical interview, which would it be?Do not lie your way through an interview. If you don't know the answer to something, just admit it. There's no shame in admitting you don't know the answer to something. There is shame in faking it and pretending like you do know the answer.
What's the single best practice everyone who writes code should follow?Remember that while you are technically writing code for computers, you're also writing it for humans. Your code should be readable and have as little complexity as possible without sacrificing accessibility or performance.
In addition to the book, you co-host the Ladybug Podcast. What inspired you to enter this field, and what are the podcast's main topics?We talk about everything tech and career on the podcast, from Java and GraphQL to how to start a business and cross-cultural communication. The podcast is a way for me and my co-hosts to share our experiences in tech, having taken different paths. And I'm really glad for doing it — it has allowed me to meet so many incredible people, learn many new things, and support my dream of teaching.
What pieces of your work are you most proud of?My technical interview book was a huge feat for me as well as my courses with LinkedIn Learning on building a tech resume. I enjoy creating things that help other people advance their careers, so I'm also proud of my courses with Frontend Masters on design systems and CSS.
Kent C. Dodds: Consume, build, and teach — and level up your career
Kent C. Dodds: Consume, build, and teach — and level up your career
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Featured Article
Kent C. Dodds
Kent C. Dodds
Even though his bio offers quite a hefty reading, he only applied for one job in his career. The rest came along as he was building his name as a renowned speaker, teacher, and a prolific figure of the open-source community. How did Kent do it? “Commit to creating high-quality content,” he says.
What led you to programming?I had a friend when I was a teenager who was really into it, and he tried to teach me. But I just couldn't get it — it didn't make any sense to me. So I never really thought I'd get into programming, but I liked computers a lot, and I ended up going to school for electrical engineering. 
Well, that didn't work because I'm not good at math. But right when I started the program, I got a job at a company uploading videos to YouTube and that sort of thing. The work was tedious, so I decided to write a computer program to automate lots of the work I was doing with the knowledge I had about programming. And that was the first spark of things for me to use programming to solve real-world problems. 
What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career? Committing to creating high-quality content. That might sound obvious because I'm a full-time educator now, but I would not have gotten my job at PayPal if I hadn't been so active with my blog. In fact, lots of my jobs came out of me being involved in the community around meetups, conferences, or open-source projects. 
How do you choose topics for the content you create, be it for your blog or podcast?I don't think too much about the content other people are creating. And I don't often consume it. My ideas come from the things that I'm working on, things that I'm learning myself, or — when I was working with a team of developers — the things that I had to remind people of in code reviews regularly. Anytime that I would have a code review comment that was pretty long to describe my position, that was an excellent opportunity for a blog post. Also, if people ask me about a topic regularly, I'll make a blog post rather than answer that question multiple times.
What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? The number one thing I tell people is to be a nice person. I know that sounds fluffy or silly, but it cannot be overstated. You will get so much further in your career and just in life in general if you're a nice person. That doesn't mean that you take people being jerks lying down, but how you interact with others is out of kindness. You could be the best engineer in the entire world, but if you're not a nice person, you will not reach your full potential or accomplish your goals, whatever they may be.
Second, it's just as important to decide what you are not going to learn as it is to decide what you are going to learn. You could jump into countless things — and there are successful people who are polyglot programmers, but I can't speak to that a whole lot. All I can tell you is that in my experience, focusing on specific things that I want to be truly good at has worked out great for my career. That doesn't mean that I closed myself off to other things. With my website rewrite, I have been doing a lot of dev ops-related work and a lot of back-end stuff that I've typically not been involved in. You want to keep your head up on what's going on outside of what you're doing so that you know what direction to go in when you come across problems you need to solve. However, finding a focus on what you want to be good at has helped me a lot. That way, you feel a little less stressed.
And the third one? Learn how to learn effectively. It's a three-step process: you consume, build, and teach. The consumption of newsletters and Twitter and whatever inspires you, but you don't want to spend too much time doing that — implementing it into actually building something matters. This happens naturally if you work at a company, but maybe you're not making the things you want to learn, so you may want to start a side project. The building phase is where you get experience, but you also want to solidify that experience. How? You start teaching. You don't necessarily have to teach it to people, it could be stuffed animals. The goal of the teaching is to retain in your mind what you've learned through the building process.
What are you working on right now? The big thing I'm working on right now is a rewrite of my website. It'll be much more than just a developer portfolio — I'll have user accounts, and there'll be fun things that you can do with it. And because it's more than just a website, I'm using Remix, a new cool framework in the React ecosystem. I'm also working on updating my material on TestingJavaScript.com and a TypeScript course as well. 
So, whatever I'm working on, it ends up resulting in lots of opportunities for content.
Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented? I have a notepad where I keep all of my notes of what I'm going to do for the day so that when I'm checking things off, I'm not distracted notifications. I've tried apps for that, and that does not work well for me. 
I also am a firm believer in inbox zero. I have my work inbox and my personal inbox, and I keep them both at zero. And I kind of use that as a to-do list. 
And if I'm not feeling excited about working for some reason, I will often hop on my Onewheel, which is an electric skateboard that only has one giant wheel in the middle. It's just a total blast, and I'll hop on that with my backpack and a charger, and I'll go to a Starbucks or a park just to declutter my mind.
What things in the React universe are you excited about right now?React version 18 is coming out soon. The experimental version is out there, and it's fun to play with. I'm just really thrilled that it's no longer a concurrent mode but concurrent features that you can opt into. Cool things like that will enable React server components in the future. 
But the biggest thing I'm excited about is Remix. That's huge. It eliminates a lot of problems that are solved well other tools, but when I'm using Remix, I don't have those problems, so I don't need those clusters.
You already said that teaching is an integral part of the learning process, and you stand your word since you're also a full-time educator. What inspired you to enter this field?I have been a teacher for as long as I can remember. I grew up in a church where you talk in front of your peers from a very young age, and my mom was an elementary school teacher, so teaching has just always been a part of me. 
I really just enjoy sharing what I'm learning with others. As far as teaching technical topics, I gave my first workshop when I was still a student at Brigham Young University. With my fellow, we taught how to use AngularJS, and I got Firebase to sponsor pizza so they would show up, and that was pretty fun.
Then I started teaching on the side at egghead.io right after I'd graduated. That was when I first got a paycheck for teaching. And I realized that teaching could be quite lucrative and support my family and me as a full-time endeavor. So I did it — I quit my job. I'm a very risk-averse person, so I'd done teaching as a side hustle for four years just to verify that I could make this work.
When TestingJavaScript was released, and I got that paycheck, I realized that I didn't need my PayPal salary anymore. I could just focus my daytime on teaching and give my evenings back to my family, which was a nice trait.
Apart from that, how has teaching impacted your career? Earlier I mentioned that pretty much all of my jobs came because I was perceived as an expert. After the first job, where I was an intern and then converted into full-time, I never applied to another. I worked for four different companies, and they wouldn't have recruited me if they didn't know who I was and what I was doing. My content is how they knew who I was — I just made it easy for them to find me. Teaching made that impact. It made my career. 
We talked about React and Remix. Are there any other open-source projects that you'd recommend keeping an eye on or contributing to?I have some myself. React Testing Library is probably the biggest one that people are familiar with. And if React isn't your jam, then other framework versions of the testing library. 
React Query is also really popular. If you're using Remix, you don't need it, but if you're not, I strongly advise using React Query cause it's a stellar, fantastic library, and Tanner Linsley, the creator, is a stellar and fantastic person. 
What pieces of your work are you most proud of? Probably the biggest thing I've ever done is EpicReact.Dev. It has helped tens of thousands of people get really good at React, improve their careers and make the world a better place with the skills that they develop. My whole mission is to make the world a better place through quality software, and I feel like I've done that best with Epic React. 
There are things that I've built at other companies that are still in use, and I'm proud of those cause they've stood the test of time, at least these last few years. But of everything, I think Epic React has made the biggest impact.
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: A Manager's Guide to Helping New Developers Thrive
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
35 min
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire: A Manager's Guide to Helping New Developers Thrive
Workshop
Andrew Coleburn
Andrew Coleburn
Onboarding to a new project can be difficult, no matter your background and experience. But it can be especially challenging for new developers straight out of school or a coding bootcamp. Drawing on personal experience as a bootcamp grad and JavaScript consultant, this talk will discuss tips and strategies for managers to help the new developers on their teams get their bearings in an unfamiliar codebase, so they can make more of an impact, faster!
Managers Are From Mars, Devs Are From Venus
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
111 min
Managers Are From Mars, Devs Are From Venus
Workshop
Mo Khazali
Mo Khazali
A Developer’s Guide to Communicating, Convincing, and Collaborating Effectively With Stakeholders
It’s a tale as old as time - collaboration between developers and business stakeholders has long been a challenge, with a lack of clear communication often leaving both sides frustrated. The best developers can deeply understand their business counterparts’ needs, effectively communicate technical strategy without losing the non-technical crowd, and convince the business to make the right decisions. Working at a consultancy, I’ve both failed and succeeded in architecting and “selling” technical visions, learning many lessons along the way.Whether you work at a product company, are a consultant/freelancer, or want to venture beyond just being a developer, the ability to convince and clearly communicate with stakeholders can set you apart in the tech industry. This becomes even more important with the rise of GenAI and the increasingly competitive developer market, as problem-solving and effective communication are key to positioning yourself.In this workshop, I’ll share real-world examples, both good and bad, and guide you through putting the theory into practice through dojos.
From Engineer to Leader: A Workshop for First-Time Tech Leaders
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
144 min
From Engineer to Leader: A Workshop for First-Time Tech Leaders
Workshop
Andrew Murphy
Andrew Murphy
Transitioning from an individual contributor role to a leadership position, especially in the fast-paced tech industry, is hugely challenging. Most new leaders don't receive any training at all in the first 10 years of their new responsibilities.Our comprehensive workshop is designed to assist new and emerging tech leaders in understanding their new roles and gaining the skills to make them confident, happy and effective leaders.
Content Creation for Developers
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
18 min
Content Creation for Developers
Today's Talk discusses the importance of technical content creation for developers, including the benefits of becoming a technical content creator and the personal growth it offers. It emphasizes the value of sharing knowledge and experiences through articles, videos, and open source projects to gain recognition and respect from the community. The Talk also provides tips for creating engaging technical content, sharing it across social platforms, and staying connected with the developer community.
Cognitive Load and Your Development Environment
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
19 min
Cognitive Load and Your Development Environment
Cognitive load is the thinking load that can lead to cognitive overload. Disabilities can increase cognitive load, and reframing tasks can reduce it. Information presentation affects cognitive load, with intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. Focus and context switching should be managed to optimize workflow and reduce cognitive load. Opening a PR can be simplified with task automation, and optimizing workflow involves reducing distractions and utilizing tools. Prioritizing personal coding skills and reducing cognitive load are key to success.
Rebooting Joy: Harnessing Playfulness and Hobbies to Redefine Work in the Tech World
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
6 min
Rebooting Joy: Harnessing Playfulness and Hobbies to Redefine Work in the Tech World
Reignite your passion for tech by incorporating playfulness and hobbies into your daily grind. Organize mini hackathons, engage in pair programming, and dedicate time for curiosity hours. Helping others and participating in hack-a-thons are great ways to stay excited. What's one hobby or playful activity that could reignite your passion?
Listen Better, Lead Better
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
7 min
Listen Better, Lead Better
Active listening is crucial for effective leadership, as it fosters trust, empathy, and meaningful relationships. The BREW framework, which emphasizes being present, reflecting, encouraging, and withholding judgment, can help develop active listening skills. By actively listening, we can understand unspoken words, create a safe environment for expression, and improve relationships. Practicing active listening leads to more fulfilling relationships and effective leadership.
From Chaos to Clarity: Leveraging RFCs in High-Performance Environments
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
10 min
From Chaos to Clarity: Leveraging RFCs in High-Performance Environments
The AmazingRFCs initiative was created to improve deliveries and collaboration at Quintana Roo. Two key actions were forming the RFCs Advisors group and optimizing the design and review process. By including interested and key people in discussions and implementing daily training initiatives, the density of capable decision makers increased, resulting in more high-quality RFCs and improved solutions in production.
Love Your Maintainers
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
19 min
Love Your Maintainers
Open source is a decentralized software development model driven by passion. Maintainers give their time for free, out of passion. Even a small act of rudeness can burn people out. Start with a detailed search when asking for help in open source projects. Providing detailed information in issue reports is crucial. Creating reproducible repositories with minimum details is the best way to get a fix. Follow up on filed issues and show kindness and gratitude towards maintainers.
From Senior Developer to Manager and Back: The Journey of Returning to Coding
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
19 min
From Senior Developer to Manager and Back: The Journey of Returning to Coding
The Talk explores the transition from software developer to team leader, highlighting the different responsibilities and challenges involved. It discusses the role of an engineering manager in organizing team work, making top-level technical decisions, and representing the team externally. The challenges and satisfaction of being a manager are also explored, with an emphasis on the importance of the team's success and growth. The Talk concludes with tips for new managers and the possibility of returning to an engineering role.
From Business Buzzwords to Meaningful Change: Measuring and Improving Engineering Productivity
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
26 min
From Business Buzzwords to Meaningful Change: Measuring and Improving Engineering Productivity
Efficiency and productivity are buzzwords in the tech industry, but they have been misused and misunderstood. Leadership roles in tech are evolving, and understanding engineering productivity is crucial. Effectiveness is about achieving goals and customer adoption, while efficiency is about doing things right with fewer resources. Prioritizing effectiveness, productivity, and efficiency can help businesses achieve their goals. Understanding company goals, aligning strategies, and involving the team in defining success metrics are key to driving productivity and improving team performance.
Maximizing Your Potential in Tech Interviews: The Three Cs to Success
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
21 min
Maximizing Your Potential in Tech Interviews: The Three Cs to Success
Tech interviews are becoming more competitive due to increasing layoffs in the tech industry. Building connections and having referrals are crucial in securing job opportunities. Building your brand and online presence can lead to job opportunities without traditional interviews. Sharing your expertise through content creation and networking can help build connections and raise awareness. Confidence, effective communication, and showcasing soft skills are key to succeeding in technical interviews.
The Art of Interviewing People or How to Identify Senior Talent
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
22 min
The Art of Interviewing People or How to Identify Senior Talent
The Talk discusses the process of interviewing and identifying senior talent. It emphasizes the importance of assessing soft skills and qualities like communication, leadership, mentoring, and teaching abilities. Evaluating problem-solving skills involves observing the candidate's reaction and their focus on the actual problem, rather than the specific answer. The Talk also highlights the significance of ownership, autonomy, emotional intelligence, and the ability to handle failure. Finally, it mentions the importance of concluding the interview by asking questions to assess the candidate's fit and career stage.
Tech Leadership Is More About People Than Tech
C3 Dev Festival 2024C3 Dev Festival 2024
27 min
Tech Leadership Is More About People Than Tech
Tech leadership is more about people than tech, as tech problems are usually people problems. Developing soft skills, such as active listening and giving feedback, is crucial for tech leaders to build high-performing teams. To solve people problems, step away from the issue, reflect, and communicate with others. Transitioning to a tech leadership role requires specific education and resources, while choosing between management and specializing involves understanding personal strengths and goals. Maintaining momentum and support requires tracking progress, building a CV, and seeking assistance when needed.
Tiny Things That Throw You Into Chaos: Engineering Leader’s Way Out of Daily Havoc
TechLead Conference 2024TechLead Conference 2024
25 min
Tiny Things That Throw You Into Chaos: Engineering Leader’s Way Out of Daily Havoc
This Talk discusses the challenges faced by engineering leaders and provides strategies to overcome them. It emphasizes the importance of organizing, prioritizing, delegating, and maintaining focus. Techniques such as email organization, task prioritization using the Eisenhower matrix, and delegation to scale work are highlighted. The Talk also emphasizes the need to protect and schedule focus time to avoid overload and fragmentation. Overall, the Talk provides practical advice for engineering leaders to navigate the chaos and enhance productivity.
Preparing for Success: A Frontend Engineer's Guide to Tech Due Diligence
React Day Berlin 2023React Day Berlin 2023
32 min
Preparing for Success: A Frontend Engineer's Guide to Tech Due Diligence
Watch video: Preparing for Success: A Frontend Engineer's Guide to Tech Due Diligence
Tech due diligence is a thorough examination that can influence a product or company's future, involving analyzing technical architecture, code base, team culture, and more. Front-end engineers play a crucial role in bridging design and functionality. Automation, infrastructure, and documentation are key areas in tech due diligence. Best practices, clean code, and market connections are important for selling. Tech due diligence requires data access and security measures, and companies may be hesitant to fully cooperate.
Three Factors That are Blocking Contributions to Your Open Source Project
React Summit US 2023React Summit US 2023
14 min
Three Factors That are Blocking Contributions to Your Open Source Project
Watch video: Three Factors That are Blocking Contributions to Your Open Source Project
Welcome to the best talk of React Summit USA. This talk is about three factors that block contributions to open source projects. Application is an open source dev tool platform that eliminates repetitive tasks in creating NodeJS backends, increasing developer productivity. I will discuss the challenges faced by first-time contributors and how to overcome them. If you want to contribute for the first time, we welcome you. Being proactive and engaging with the community can attract long-term contributors.
The Unexpected Key Value Pair in Mentoring
React Summit US 2023React Summit US 2023
9 min
The Unexpected Key Value Pair in Mentoring
Watch video: The Unexpected Key Value Pair in Mentoring
Heather May
Sidney Buckner
2 authors
This Talk discusses the unique mentorship journey of the speakers, who found each other through Coding Dojo and LinkedIn. They highlight the power of mentorship, emphasizing the value of having another woman in tech for support and guidance. The impact of mentorship is also emphasized, with the speakers encouraging others to be mentors and share their knowledge. They describe the mentor-mentee relationship as wonderful, inclusive, and supportive.
Lessons Learned While Learning Live
TypeScript Congress 2023TypeScript Congress 2023
25 min
Lessons Learned While Learning Live
Learning something new is scary, but overcoming the fear of judgment and embracing patience and practice are key. Understanding learning techniques and the importance of continuous learning are essential in overcoming the fear of public speaking. Learning from podcasts and sharing clips can help in overcoming the paralysis of learning. Making mistakes is inevitable, but it is a part of the learning process. Discovering passion and finding the dream job can be a challenging journey. Learning styles, studying techniques, and embracing frustration are crucial in the learning journey. Typescript provides structure and tools for easier learning. Continuous growth and embracing uncertainty are important for personal development. Starting live streaming requires attention to gear and audio quality.
Tired of Tech? Hit Reset with a Sabbatical or LOA
React Summit 2023React Summit 2023
8 min
Tired of Tech? Hit Reset with a Sabbatical or LOA
Watch video: Tired of Tech? Hit Reset with a Sabbatical or LOA
Between burnout, toxic workplaces, the pandemic, the economic downturn, hustle culture, and constant upskilling, let's enjoy the journey instead of slogging through it. Introducing the idea of taking a mini-retirement while working, starting with a sabbatical. Companies offer sabbaticals as a perk, allowing personal development and a chance to return to work. Many companies have publicly stated sabbatical programs, like Adobe. Requirements are guidelines, not set in stone. And they offered it to me anyway by way of apology. Everything worked out, our mini-retirement lasted six months. In fact, the benefits of extended time off are something the rest of the world seems to understand, but the US hasn't gotten the memo. What about those of you who don't have access to a sabbatical? Is there another kind of mini-retirement you could pull off? Absolutely. You can check if you have the ability to request an unpaid personal leave of absence. Unlike a sabbatical, there's no guarantee you'll have a job waiting for you when you get back, but you can request it for any reason at any time. Great, but how can you do this? So let's talk logistics. A mini retirement is within reach for a lot of people. Here's a worksheet to help you plan your mini retirement. Determine your cash in and cash out to calculate your savings rate. You can choose how many months you want to take off and calculate the amount of money you need to save. Your savings rate reveals important information about your finances. Saving 10% to 20% can cut the time needed in half, and saving 30% per month allows you to work from September to May and save for your summer off. There are some considerations, such as paying for benefits out-of-pocket and pausing contributions to retirement accounts. Now, go take a mini retirement and explore more resources on personal finance and lifestyle design.
Why Leetcode is Dead and Pair Programming for Interviews is the Way Forward
TechLead Conference 2023TechLead Conference 2023
32 min
Why Leetcode is Dead and Pair Programming for Interviews is the Way Forward
The Talk discusses the problems with online coding tests and the benefits of pair programming interviews. It emphasizes the importance of hiring and growth, including creating a positive interview experience and considering the cost of hiring. The job of a software developer extends beyond coding and requires multiple skill sets. Pair programming provides a more accurate assessment of skills required for software development. The Talk also covers implementing a tennis scoring system and customizing pair programming interviews for different roles and levels.
Do You Really Have to Become a Manager to Advance in Your Career?
TechLead Conference 2023TechLead Conference 2023
20 min
Do You Really Have to Become a Manager to Advance in Your Career?
The Talk discusses the misconception that software career is a linear progression and shares a story of a software engineer turned engineering manager who wasn't happy. It explores the complexity of describing personality types in software engineering and the importance of considering talents, job meaning, and skill development when making career decisions. The Talk also emphasizes the significance of finding meaning in one's job, job crafting, and exploring different career paths. It concludes with the idea of challenging assumptions, assessing talents, and introspection for effective job crafting.
Purpose: What I Learned from Stepping Down as Team Lead Twice
TechLead Conference 2023TechLead Conference 2023
8 min
Purpose: What I Learned from Stepping Down as Team Lead Twice
The Talk discusses the importance of finding purpose and learning from past experiences in software development. It emphasizes the need to test different areas and reflect on experiences to find direction. Understanding one's purpose and the value it brings is crucial. Mistakes are seen as valuable insights for improvement.
How to Get a Mentor Without Telling Them
TechLead Conference 2023TechLead Conference 2023
21 min
How to Get a Mentor Without Telling Them
This Talk explores the topic of mentorship, focusing on how to get a mentor without explicitly asking. It discusses the qualities of a good mentor and the importance of being a good mentee. The benefits of mentorship include personal growth, career advancement, and fostering a collaborative work culture. Strategies for finding mentors and mentees are provided, along with tips for navigating mentorship conversations. Overall, mentorship is seen as a powerful tool for learning, growth, and mutual support in the field of software engineering.
How To Design A Sustainable Freelance/Contracting Career + Speedcoding Challenge
React Summit 2022React Summit 2022
75 min
How To Design A Sustainable Freelance/Contracting Career + Speedcoding Challenge
WorkshopFree
Shane Ketterman
Shane Ketterman
Ready to kickstart your freelance career or just getting started on your freelance journey? You’re in the right spot. Learn from the world’s largest fully distributed workforce in the world.
The independent talent movement is the future of work. If you’re considering leaving full-time employment for a career as a freelancer, now is the time to find your successful space in the independent talent workforce. More people are working freelance today than ever before, with the freelance marketplace now contributing $1.2 trillion to the US economy. Some of the most in-demand roles for freelancers right now are senior developers with professional experience in React, Python, Blockchain, QA, and Node.js.
This workshop will help you design a sustainable and profitable full-time (or part-time) freelancing/contracting career. We will give you tools, tips, best practices, and help you avoid common pitfalls.
At the end of the workshop there will be a Q&A session with a Freelance Developer who can answer your questions and provide insights and tips into their own success.
During the Workshop break, we will be running a speed-coding challenge! At the end of the workshop, we will award a prize for the winner and display the leaderboard.
We will have you login to our portal and complete the challenge as fast as you can to earn points. Points are assigned based on difficulty and the speed at which you solve the tasks. In case you complete all tasks, you get extra points for the remaining time. You’ll see your score, ranking, and the leaderboard once you complete the challenge.
We will be giving away three Amazon Gift Cards ($200, $100, $75) for the top three winners.
You Do Have Time to Build it Twice
React Summit 2022React Summit 2022
21 min
You Do Have Time to Build it Twice
Top Content
Today's Talk focuses on software rewrites, specifically the transition from jQuery to React. The speaker shares their experience of rewriting a jQuery app to React, highlighting the benefits of the rewrite in terms of improved user experience and increased conversions. Approaches to software rewrites are discussed, including the page-by-page approach which allows for product innovation. The speaker emphasizes the importance of prioritizing rewrites or refactors for startups. The Talk concludes with insights on testing, server-side functionality, and the overall value of the rewrite.
Designing A Sustainable Freelance Career
TestJS Summit 2021TestJS Summit 2021
110 min
Designing A Sustainable Freelance Career
Video
Alexander Weekes
Rodrigo Donini
2 authors
Would you like to pursue your passions and have more control over your career? Would you like schedule and location flexibility and project variety? Would you like the stability of working full-time and getting paid consistently? Thousands of companies have embraced remote work and realize that they have access to a global talent pool. This is advantageous for anyone who has considered or is currently considering freelance work.

Freelancing is no longer an unstable career choice. This workshop will help you design a sustainable and profitable full-time (or part-time) freelancing career. We will give you tools, tips, best practices, and help you avoid common pitfalls.

>> Submit your interest on becoming a freelance engineer with Toptal and get a call with Talent Acquisition specialist <<

Table of contents:

Module 1: Dispelling common myths about freelancing
Module 2: What does freelancing look like in 2021 and beyond
Module 3: Freelancing choices and what to look for (and what to avoid)
Module 4: Benefits of freelancing from a freelancer + case study
BREAK - SPEED CODING CHALLENGE
Module 6: How to get started freelancing (experience, resume, preparation)
Module 7: Common paths to full-time freelancing
Module 8: Essentials: setting your rate and getting work
Module 9: Next steps: networking with peers, upskilling, changing the world
Module 10: Freelancer AMA
SPEED CODING WINNER ANNOUNCED
Charlie Gerard's Career Advice: Be intentional about how you spend your time and effort
Charlie Gerard's Career Advice: Be intentional about how you spend your time and effort
Article
Charlie Gerard
Charlie Gerard
When it comes to career, Charlie has one trick: to focus. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try different things — currently a senior front-end developer at Netlify, she is also a sought-after speaker, mentor, and a machine learning trailblazer of the JavaScript universe. "Experiment with things, but build expertise in a specific area," she advises.
What led you to software engineering?My background is in digital marketing, so I started my career as a project manager in advertising agencies. After a couple of years of doing that, I realized that I wasn't learning and growing as much as I wanted to. I was interested in learning more about building websites, so I quit my job and signed up for an intensive coding boot camp called General Assembly. I absolutely loved it and started my career in tech from there.
What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career?I think it might be public speaking. Going on stage to share knowledge about things I learned while building my side projects gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people in the industry, learn a ton from watching other people's talks and, for lack of better words, build a personal brand.
What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career?Practice your communication skills. I can't stress enough how important it is to be able to explain things in a way anyone can understand, but also communicate in a way that's inclusive and creates an environment where team members feel safe and welcome to contribute ideas, ask questions, and give feedback. In addition, build some expertise in a specific area. I'm a huge fan of learning and experimenting with lots of technologies but as you grow in your career, there comes a time where you need to pick an area to focus on to build more profound knowledge. This could be in a specific language like JavaScript or Python or in a practice like accessibility or web performance. It doesn't mean you shouldn't keep in touch with anything else that's going on in the industry, but it means that you focus on an area you want to have more expertise in. If you could be the "go-to" person for something, what would you want it to be? 
And lastly, be intentional about how you spend your time and effort. Saying yes to everything isn't always helpful if it doesn't serve your goals. No matter the job, there are always projects and tasks that will help you reach your goals and some that won't. If you can, try to focus on the tasks that will grow the skills you want to grow or help you get the next job you'd like to have.
What are you working on right now?Recently I've taken a pretty big break from side projects, but the next one I'd like to work on is a prototype of a tool that would allow hands-free coding using gaze detection. 
Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented?Usually, when I come up with a side project idea I'm really excited about, that excitement is enough to keep me motivated. That's why I tend to avoid spending time on things I'm not genuinely interested in. Otherwise, breaking down projects into smaller chunks allows me to fit them better in my schedule. I make sure to take enough breaks, so I maintain a certain level of energy and motivation to finish what I have in mind.
You wrote a book called Practical Machine Learning in JavaScript. What got you so excited about the connection between JavaScript and ML?The release of TensorFlow.js opened up the world of ML to frontend devs, and this is what really got me excited. I had machine learning on my list of things I wanted to learn for a few years, but I didn't start looking into it before because I knew I'd have to learn another language as well, like Python, for example. As soon as I realized it was now available in JS, that removed a big barrier and made it a lot more approachable. Considering that you can use JavaScript to build lots of different applications, including augmented reality, virtual reality, and IoT, and combine them with machine learning as well as some fun web APIs felt super exciting to me.

Where do you see the fields going together in the future, near or far? I'd love to see more AI-powered web applications in the future, especially as machine learning models get smaller and more performant. However, it seems like the adoption of ML in JS is still rather low. Considering the amount of content we post online, there could be great opportunities to build tools that assist you in writing blog posts or that can automatically edit podcasts and videos. There are lots of tasks we do that feel cumbersome that could be made a bit easier with the help of machine learning.
You are a frequent conference speaker. You have your own blog and even a newsletter. What made you start with content creation?I realized that I love learning new things because I love teaching. I think that if I kept what I know to myself, it would be pretty boring. If I'm excited about something, I want to share the knowledge I gained, and I'd like other people to feel the same excitement I feel. That's definitely what motivated me to start creating content.
How has content affected your career?I don't track any metrics on my blog or likes and follows on Twitter, so I don't know what created different opportunities. Creating content to share something you built improves the chances of people stumbling upon it and learning more about you and what you like to do, but this is not something that's guaranteed. I think over time, I accumulated enough projects, blog posts, and conference talks that some conferences now invite me, so I don't always apply anymore. I sometimes get invited on podcasts and asked if I want to create video content and things like that. Having a backlog of content helps people better understand who you are and quickly decide if you're the right person for an opportunity.What pieces of your work are you most proud of?It is probably that I've managed to develop a mindset where I set myself hard challenges on my side project, and I'm not scared to fail and push the boundaries of what I think is possible. I don't prefer a particular project, it's more around the creative thinking I've developed over the years that I believe has become a big strength of mine.***Follow Charlie on Twitter
Lee Robinson's career advice: My golden rule to success is being helpful
Lee Robinson's career advice: My golden rule to success is being helpful
Article
Lee Robinson
Lee Robinson
Developer, writer, creator, says the headline of Lee’s site, a front-end developer with 10k YouTube subscribers and 5k newsletter followers. Today an internationally recognized speaker and author of extensive courses on React and Next.js, he says he owes his success to sharing what he was learning online. "The best time to start with content creation was yesterday!" he exclaims. 
What led you to software engineering?I've always enjoyed creative work, especially building things from scratch. I have roots in design and photography, which ultimately led to a perfect match for front-end development. And how did I go from a designer to a developer? I wrote an extensive post about my journey on my blog. What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career?Hands down, writing online. Sharing what I was learning online led to new connections and opportunities I couldn't have imagined. It's helped me generate passive income, land new jobs, and make some great friends. The best time to start was yesterday! And if you need a tip or two on how to kickstart your content creation, I wrote a short article that will help you make heads and tails of the whole process.What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career?First, leave the code in a better place than you found it. Second, work on improving your written and verbal communication. And third, write documentation. You'll be the developer everyone loves. 

What are you working on right now?I'm entirely focused on leading developer relations at Vercel and Next.js but have been entertaining making another programming course as a side project. I'm also considering rebuilding my personal site — for the 10th time!Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented?I try to stay active, get plenty of sleep, and focus on long-term goals. It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, so I frequently try to think about what I want to achieve in the long run. If I'm not making progress towards a better future, then it's time to change something. As for staying focused, it's incredibly important I'm working on something I truly believe in. Otherwise, I would likely get bored very quickly. I'm bullish on Next.js, Vercel, and our mission of building a better web.Apart from your job, you also maintain a very successful content platform. Why did you start, and how did you grow it to 80k blog post views, 10k YouTube subscribers, and 5k newsletter followers?My golden rule is being helpful online. At the end of the day, if I'm consistently helping people in a positive way, all the metrics will go up and to the right over time. I started writing online about seven years ago and haven't looked back since.


You also launched two learning projects: React 2025 and Mastering Next.js. Can you tell us more about them and why you decided to provide them for free?I didn't set out to create programming courses but ultimately ended up creating the resources I wished I had earlier in my career. Most of my content creation was solving problems that "past Lee" faced. For Next.js specifically, when I started creating content, it was still relatively new and hadn't reached critical adoption. I believe that helped with the growth of my courses and audience. After some time, I ended up making both free for everyone. Money wasn't the main incentive for me, but rather helping other people — and past Lee.Are you working on a new personal project at the moment?Not now. But I'm leading a team of content creators at Vercel, so there's a lot in the works here now! My team is made up of some wonderful people, and this has been an exciting transition in my career.What open-source projects would you recommend keeping an eye on or contributing to?I've been very interested in Rust lately, with Next.js investing more into using Rust (through SWC) to optimize compiling and bundling. Check out SWC and expect more educational material on Rust in the future from our team.
What pieces of your work are you most proud of?I'm most proud of the students who have taken my courses and ultimately landed jobs or created their own products. It's very fulfilling for me and the reason I love being a content creator.***Follow Lee on Twitter
Career tips by Tomasz Łakomy: I strive to challenge myself as often as I can
Career tips by Tomasz Łakomy: I strive to challenge myself as often as I can
Article
Tomasz Łakomy
Tomasz Łakomy
Speakers are not made — they are born out of circumstances. And Tomasz is a perfect example of a self-starter who rose to the occasion. “I started at local meetups and climbed my way up to bigger and bigger events,” he says, nodding at the fact that he's now also a seasoned instructor revolutionizing modern commerce. How did he get there?
What led you to software engineering?It's been quite a journey. Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in technology, but I was definitely not one of those five-year-old prodigies that installed Arch Linux on their fridge. I wrote my first program on a Commodore 64 copying an entire page of arcane characters from a book to a computer and hitting Enter. And then I watched the screen flash in different colors.I built — okay, copied and pasted random code till it worked, which I kind of do till this day — my first website when I was around 12, but I never thought that web development would turn out to be my career. In fact, I explicitly did not decide to pursue a Computer Science degree for various reasons. I felt I wasn't good enough and thought that programming was not for me.Instead, I decided to pursue a master's degree in Electronics and Telecommunications, which, to my surprise, was most likely harder than the CS curriculum. Along the way, I got an opportunity to learn C++, which wasn't exactly a cakewalk, but it led me to my first internship, which led to another one where I was a part of an eight-week-long paid bootcamp. There I learned web development from scratch, an opportunity I'm forever grateful for. And I've been programming for a living ever since.What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career? It was back in 2017 when I decided to give public speaking a shot. Like all tech speakers, I started at local meetups and slowly but surely climbed my way up to bigger and bigger events.Contrary to a popular notion, speaking at tech conferences is not exactly something you do for money. The connections, networking, and genuine friendships that happened because of all those events are priceless, though. The doors you get to open, the places you get to see, the people you get to meet — if you're able to, I cannot recommend speaking at tech events enough.
What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? I wrote everything I wished I knew earlier in this blog post. In short: talk to humans rather than machines, have a deep understanding of what you are building and why, and don't be afraid to say, "I don't know." Also, learn in public, as some of my colleagues mentioned in their interviews.What are you working on right now? I'm currently a front-end engineer at Stedi, where we're building a fully serverless platform for companies to integrate and exchange business transactions with each other. Stedi is a fully remote startup with employees from all around the globe, and I'm a part of a ridiculously talented team of engineers who happen to be from the same city I'm from!The business domain we're in hasn't seen much innovation in decades, and it's such an exciting space to contribute to. We're working on challenging and complex problems. After all, revolutionizing modern commerce can't be easy. Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented? I'm not sure if this is a ritual, but I strive to challenge myself as often as I can and pursue new personal and professional growth areas. My favorite answer to the famous "Where do you see yourself in five years?" question is, "I don't know." I feel like if you do know where you'll end up in five years, you may not be thinking broadly enough about your potential and possibilities. In this line of work, it's crucial to be focused on growth and becoming a lifelong learner.You're an egghead.io instructor, where you've contributed with two courses and more than 170 lessons. What do you find rewarding about the experience?Joining egghead was life-changing for me. Apart from the financial incentive, having the ability to record a lesson or a course in my bedroom and teach something useful to hundreds, if not thousands of developers, is remarkable. I'm forever grateful to Joel and the entire egghead crew for having me. If you're interested, you can read a bit more about my journey with them in the post.What would you say are essential qualities and skills for teaching — and learning?Keep your eyes open as there's always more to learn. Try to learn something new every week, if not every day. When teaching, optimize for boredom. It's better to explain something again to an expert rather than to a beginner who may feel excluded.Also, when one teaches, two learn, so use teaching as a tool of solidifying your own knowledge.And don't forget to be kind. Whenever you teach someone a concept that may seem totally obvious to you because you mastered it years ago, make sure to remember that you were a beginner not so long ago too.What open-source projects would you recommend keeping an eye on or contributing to?I'm a huge fan of everything Tanner Linsley is working on, especially React Query. In my humble opinion, it's the best library since jQuery, so make sure to check it out. It's just excellent.What pieces of your work are you most proud of? Whenever someone reaches out to me saying that a video, article, podcast, or talk I created helped them, it always means the world to me. It's an incredible feeling to have something you wrote a couple of months ago reach out to someone else from across the globe and help them grow as a developer.
Shawn Swyx Wang's career tips: Knowing how to market yourself is not scammy
Shawn Swyx Wang's career tips: Knowing how to market yourself is not scammy
Article
Shawn Swyx Wang
Shawn Swyx Wang
As it is with many developers, his path to coding was not straightforward. And looking at Shawn's bio, it's apparent he applied that experience to his whole career: he's the head of developer experience at Temporal.io, author of a bestselling book on progressing career in IT, and a sought-after mentor and speaker. His number one advice? “Marketing is not beneath you.”
What led you to software engineering?My first career was in finance, and I did a lot of trading of currency derivatives and stock portfolios. We had to do a lot of number crunching in Excel, Python, and then Haskell. I was the guy putting together all that data. I didn't call myself an engineer, but I was writing software. I saw that there are many good ideas in software engineering that I should learn and that once I do that, my life will be significantly better. So I left finance and went through a boot camp to learn all the software engineering practices. My first job was at two Sigma as a front-end engineer. Then I joined Netlify as a developer engineer and then AWS. What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career?This will sound very similar to Ken's thing, and it's called learning in public. I did it when I was at Sigma because I wasn't learning much at work. I was in New York City, there were many meetups, and I decided to give myself my own mentors speaking there, writing blog posts, sharing them, and just finding more ways to grow apart from inside of my company. And I realized that it was way more effective than just waiting for the right boss or co-worker to teach me.Also, the dev community has been so welcoming and supportive. You learn, share what you've learned, and people will correct you if you're wrong. And once you're wrong, you will never forget what you have been learning. So if you have a pretty thick skin and a low ego, you can learn a lot. In fact, with my most recent job, I wrote a blog post about what I thought was missing in the serverless ecosystem based on what I had seen at AWS and Netlify. Someone commented on my blog, a VC read the comments and hired that guy to head the products at Temporal. And then that guy turned around and hired me based on that blog post. For me, learning in public has opened up jobs and speaking opportunities on multiple continents. And I've made a lot of friends who are genuinely interested in technology.What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? Understand that some marketing is unavoidable and that knowing how to market yourself authentically is not scammy. It's not beneath you. It's what you need to do to get people to know you, your skills, and the quality of your work. A lot of developers have a build-it-and-they-will-come mentality, and it does not serve them very well. Invest some time into developing your marketing and understanding how to market yourself. I have a blog called How to market yourself without being a celebrity. When people look at marketing, they see the celebrity path, the influencer path. But many people don't want to be an influencer, so they'll say: "No marketing for me!" Let's disconnect those two things. Also, there's a difference between marketing yourself internally within your company — which you should always do — and marketing yourself externally with other developers.My second tip is to clone open-source apps. Clone something that already exists so that you stop making all these little product decisions. Maybe your implementation will be better, which is great; that's how the industry improves. And if it's worse, you start to understand the underlying trade-offs of your project. And a third one?Many people have the cold start problem when it comes to networking and content creation. Yes, you will not get much response when you start. So the way to guarantee response is what I call a "pick up what they put down" approach. If you want feedback, start giving feedback, mainly whenever people put out something new.When somebody you respect publishes a new demo, a new library, a new blog post, or a new workshop, summarize it, respond to it, react to it. Not with a YouTube reaction video, but actually respond to the meat of the content. Ask questions: Do you agree? Do you disagree? What else can you do with this implementation? Pick up on the things. Find bugs in the demos and the libraries, and you're guaranteed to get a response from that.I think that's an excellent starting point because these people are already influential. Almost definition, they have more ideas, and they know what they do. You work with them, become a collaborator. Eventually, you start to disagree with them, and you feel forced off into your own path. That's, I think, a great way to get started.
You are now working on developer experience at Temporal.io. What does it entail?Temporal is an open-source microservices orchestration system, which you could compare to Apache Airflow or AWS Step Functions. But we're better. There's a core server that is open source, and then there's all this stuff around it that needs to reach developers: documentation, developer relations, web UI, and SDKs. And I'm the head of developer experience helping each team in those areas. They are not essential to the server itself but important to how developers experience the product. I have overarching excitement in my career about helping technologies cross the chasm. I'm not sure who came up with the term, but the idea is that when you switch over from early adopters to a broad audience, there is a big gap in the middle where you have to fill in a lot of gaps with developer experience. That's what I focus on. Do you have some rituals or tools that keep you focused and goal-oriented?I try to do time blocking. For example, interview calls are on Fridays, which gives me focus on work from Mondays to Thursdays. Within the day, you have different time blocks as well. And if you can block off time for yourself too, I think you can get a lot more done.Apart from your daily job, you are a writer and speaker, and you recently published The Coding Career Handbook. What inspired you to write it?Mostly the feedback from my essay on learning in public. It was the most impactful piece of writing I've ever done; it reached over a million people. I can write about technical stuff, and I think it would be easier to sell, but React will be over someday. The thing that will not be over is career stuff, the evergreen things. When I decided to write the book, I had some time between my Netlify job and my Amazon job. So I wrote a poll, and the one with the more enthusiastic response was the career stuff. For whatever reason, this is the most valuable topic to my readers. Also, I think there's a gap in the market for leveling juniors and seniors. You can find many materials on how to learn to code and crack the coding interview. And then there's a big gap. But many people are coming into tech as juniors, and there's a lot of companies wanting to hire seniors — and nobody focuses on developing juniors into seniors.So I'm trying to contribute my thoughts as well as the thoughts of others. I collected 1,500 references to other people's ideas on becoming a senior engineer in the book. And I think if I keep at this — this is version one — I will build it up into the ultimate resource on how to become a senior engineer.
And if you were to highlight one idea from your book, which one would it be?I'd say the most underappreciated part of my book is the strategy section — the importance of picking the right thing to work on rather than just being a clean coder or choosing the right tech stack. Understanding how money is made from your software is key to selecting the right company and positioning yourself correctly within the company. You are also very active in the community: you've contributed to several other books, have a 34k+ following on Twitter, helped to run the React subreddit... How has it impacted your career?It helps you to know everybody. It allows you to understand what's going on. I'm typically the source of news to my team, and they appreciate that. Also, if you're friends with everybody, you don't have to know everything — it's all coming from that community. What open-source projects would you recommend keeping an eye on or contributing to?I left the React community because I was getting more and more interested in Svelte. I do think it is an underrated framework for front-end developers. It's not for everybody, but I think it solves a good set of problems, including state management, styling, and animation. At React, we still don't have good answers for these things after all these years.What pieces of your work are you most proud of?Mostly the community behind the coding career handbook. I set up a semi-private Discord channel for people who opt into the community, and seeing people get jobs, double their pay when they go from junior to senior — that's really exciting. It's a great place for discussion where you can be totally honest. Realizing that that's something that I can do for ten years and not get bored of it, that's something I'm proud of.
Catalin Pit: Each time I learn something new, I write an article about it
7 min
Catalin Pit: Each time I learn something new, I write an article about it
Article
Catalin Pit
Catalin Pit
He turned a successful blog into a thriving YouTube channel, a newsletter with thousands of subscribers, and a great online presence. “I owe a significant part of my career to content creation and social media,” says Catalin Pit in his interview with GitNation.

What led you to software engineering?
I started accident, actually. I was studying accountancy, preparing myself to become an accountant. However, before finishing school, I moved to the UK, and things changed. I went to a college where I had to choose between a handful of subjects — and IT was the most familiar and attractive of all of them. After three years in college, I was so excited about programming that I went on to study computer science at a university. So yes, I got into software engineering mistake, but I'm more than happy with how things turned out.
What is the most impactful thing you ever did to boost your career?
Starting a blog and taking social media presence seriously. For real, I wouldn't have my current job at Hashnode if I hadn't stepped up my game in that department.
What would be your three tips for engineers to level up their career? 
First, don't be afraid to ask questions. Second, go out and broaden your network — meet people and build genuine connections. And finally, create content. By doing so, you'll help not just yourself but others as well to advance in the given field or profession.
And if I may add one engineering advice, I'd say don't try to write fancy-schmancy code. If you can, use the KISS principle: "Keep it simple, stupid." Obviously, do so without sacrificing readability and performance.

Do you have some rituals that keep you focused and goal-oriented? 
Actually, I just sit down and work! I don't even listen to music. I tried listening to lo-fi songs when working, but they still distracted me...
I've been working from home over the last year and a half, and the place where I go to relax and recharge is the gym. I try to go there once I finish my work, and when I return, I tend to work two or three hours on my stuff, be it my blog or my YouTube channel.
But, sometimes I skip that. Life's not all about work, and I try to keep a healthy work-life balance. It's easy to get overworked when you work remotely, and you constantly face issues such as poor time management and no face-to-face interactions. To avoid feeling down, I stop checking all work-related stuff when I'm done for the day, and I change my workplace — sometimes I go to a café just to be surrendered people. In addition, I work without checking my phone, notifications, and inbox for a specific timeframe to avoid distractions. And to manage my time, I use the Pomodoro technique.
As you mention, you have a blog, a YouTube channel, and even a newsletter. What made you start with content creation? 
I began after getting my university degree. First, I launched the blog, and I did to reinforce what I'd learned. To teach is to learn twice, as they say. By explaining things and going over them, you get to understand the subject at hand better. I was studying data structures and algorithms to apply for jobs, and each time I'd learn something new or solve a problem, I'd blog about it. I kept doing it, and it became a habit. Now, I don't think I will ever stop writing programming articles.

Do you cover different topics via different media?
I prefer to create a piece of content and distribute it through all the channels. For instance, a blog article can serve as a script for my YouTube video. It makes the whole process more straightforward, and your audience can choose the content format they prefer.
How has content creation impacted your career?
It's been crucial to my professional development. As I said earlier, I got my current job thanks to producing content for the community, and I constantly get various job offers, side gigs, and other proposals because of my blog entries or YouTube videos. 
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
I don't want to get carried away, but the truth is that content creation changed my life for the better. So I'll say I'm really proud of my blog. It gave me many opportunities I did not expect, and it helped other people skill up. That's just great.
***
Follow Catalin on Twitter
When You Think There Is No Time for Learning or Coding
JSNation Live 2020JSNation Live 2020
8 min
When You Think There Is No Time for Learning or Coding
This Talk discusses the speaker's coding journey, forming habits, and finding time for coding. The speaker recommends participating in the 100 days of code challenge and learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AngularJS, and D3.js. Building small projects and games is helpful for learning and growth. The importance of forming habits and overcoming resistance is emphasized, along with prioritizing consistency and focusing on details. Finding time is about reclaiming the 24 hours we all have and making small changes to accommodate coding. Keeping a log or notebook is important for tracking progress.
Landing Your Next Developer Job
React Summit Remote Edition 2021React Summit Remote Edition 2021
121 min
Landing Your Next Developer Job
WorkshopFree
Sadek Drobi
Nouha Chhih
Francois Bohyn
3 authors
Renaud Bressant (Head of Product), Nathanael Lamellière (Head of Customer Success and Solution Engineer), Nouha Chhih (Developer Experience Manager) will be looking at the different developer jobs that you can accounter when looking for your next developer role. We'll be explaining the specifics of each role, to help you identify which one could be your next move. We'll also be sharing tips to help you navigate the recruitment process, based on the different roles we interviewed for as recruiters, but also as candidates. This will be more of an Ask Us Anything session, so don't hesitate to share your thoughts and questions during the session.
Engineers Learn to Negotiate
React Summit Remote Edition 2021React Summit Remote Edition 2021
8 min
Engineers Learn to Negotiate
During this Talk, the speaker emphasizes the importance of negotiation skills in the tech industry and how it can help grow one's career. Mirroring and labeling are discussed as effective techniques in building trust and reducing negative emotions. The concept of being a sponge is introduced, highlighting the significance of listening attentively in negotiations. The Talk concludes by emphasizing the importance of communication and negotiation skills for engineers and encourages self-reflection and improvement.
Lessons To Outlive React
React Summit Remote Edition 2021React Summit Remote Edition 2021
34 min
Lessons To Outlive React
Top Content
The Talk focuses on the lessons we can learn from React's success, including API design, optimizing for change, testing, and community engagement. The idea of a DX UX mullet, with immediate mode in the front and retained mode in the back, is observed in various areas of software development. The importance of naming and optimizing for change is emphasized, as well as the significance of DevTools and building a community. The principles behind the Temporal framework and the importance of good naming in API design are also discussed.